


The Little Lemur Who Thought He Was People

by goeskaboom



Category: Penguins of Madagascar
Genre: Accidents, Cute, Gen, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-03
Updated: 2010-09-03
Packaged: 2017-10-11 10:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goeskaboom/pseuds/goeskaboom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Mort accidentally activates an unfinished invention of Kowalski's, he ends up switching minds with a random office worker somewhere in New York City. Now that he has no one to boss around, King Julian insists that the penguins find a way to switch him back before he leaves for good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Lemur Who Thought He Was People

When Kowalski had a problem with some new gadget that he was working on, he usually would not give up until it was completed. But this time, whatever it was had him completely stumped. Grumbling to himself, he threw the gun-like object into a drawer and stomped off. "Are you alright?" Private asked. "Did you finish your new gun?"

"No," Kowalski said, somewhat dejected. "I just can't get the coil to go in the right place!"

"What is it supposed to do?"the younger penguin asked.

"In theory, it's supposed to turn animals into humans, so the next time we need to leave the zoo we can just walk out with all of the other visitors! But right now, all it does is make you think you are a human, and removes your memories of ever being a penguin!"

"Oh," Private said. "Do you think it will ever be finished?"

"Maybe someday," Kowalski replied. "But not now." Private looked like he was going to ask the older penguin some more questions when Skipper poked his head into the room.

"Kowalski! Private! You were supposed to report for water training ten minutes ago! What would you do if this was real, and we were really under attack? Would you just be lolly-gagging around like this? I don't think so!" The two of them hurried out of their base, quickly apologizing to Skipper and preparing for the training exercises.

"Maurice! Have the penguins left yet?" King Julian asked lazily, stretching out on his chaise. Maurice sighed, and glanced over at the penguin enclosure. "Uh, actually, they have, your majesty!"

"Then let us go and watch the penguins' TV!"

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Maurice asked, hesitating a little bit. "The last time we broke into the penguin habitat they almost blew us up with dynamite. Maybe we should hold off..."

"No!" Julian exclaimed. "I am king, and what belongs to others belongs to the king! That TV is my TV!" Maurice sighed.

"Fine, fine..."

"Mort wants to go too!" the small lemur exclaimed, charging toward the lemur king's feet and attaching himself to them. King Julian looked disgusted, and tried to shake him off.

"How many times do I have to tell you? Do not touch the royal feet!"

All feet controversy aside, the lemurs arrived in the penguin habitat. Immediately, Julian plopped himself down in front of the television and switched it to the Dumb Animal Channel, laughing at the videos of the stupid dogs trying to skateboard, the stupid cats trying to play air hockey, and the stupid parrot that was trying to play a piano, and failing miserably, since his beak kept getting stuck in between the keys. "Hahahaha! Look, Maurice! The parrot cannot get his beak out of the piano!" Maurice just sighed, letting the king have his moment of amusement. Hey, if he wanted to see parrots getting their beaks stuck into pianos, then that was his deal. But to be honest, he was just thankful that the hyperactive lemur king was entertained for a while. That meant he wasn't having to do anything for him...

Meanwhile, the smallest member of the lemur team was bouncing around the penguin habitat looking for interesting things. When he reached Kowalski's work area, Mort noticed the penguin's drawer was cracked open. Curiously, he poked his head into the crack between drawer opening and the drawer itself... and immediately fell in. "AAAAAH!" he yelled. "KING JULIAN, HELP ME!"

But unfortunately for the small lemur, the king was watching the television, and couldn't hear anything. But even if he had been able to hear the smaller lemur's cries, he wouldn't care at all.

"It's dark in here..." Mort mumbled, clutching his tail in fear. Then, he looked up, and saw the slight light that was coming from the top of the drawer, and then he bumped into something hard. Mort looked at the thing he had hit, and it seemed as though it would create a nice little stepladder to use to get out of the drawer. So the lemur clambered up the object, not realizing that it was Kowalski's unfinished animal-to-people gun. Halfway up the gun, the small lemur slipped, and hit the trigger. There was a loud bang, a bright blue flash, and the drawer flew open.

"Augh! Maurice, we're under attack!" King Julian exclaimed, hitting the deck and covering his head with his hands. "Eat Mort first, whatever you are!"

"Your majesty, Mort isn't here, and there's nothing that's going to eat us," Maurice sighed, hopping up on Kowalski's work bench to investigate the source of the explosion.

"Aaaaangh..." a very familiar high-pitched voice whined. "Where am I? And why do I feel like something hit me on the head? Oh no, I'm going to be late for work!"

"Mort?" Maurice asked. "Mort, are you alright?" He peered down into the drawer to find a rather disoriented Mort blinking up at him. "And what do you mean, you're going to be late for work?"

"Who are you?" Mort asked curiously. "And have you seen my wallet anywhere? I need to get going or the boss is going to yell at me again, and maybe cut my paycheck!" Maurice just stared. No way. What happened to Mort, the goofy, feet-obsessed lemur that everyone knew, and very few loved? What happened to his eager-to-please personality? And what the heck was he talking about, he was going to be late for work?

"Um, King Julian? I think you'd better get up here," he called.

"Maurice! This had better be very important!" the lemur king complained, hoisting himself up to the table top. "Oh! Mort! There you are. I was wondering where you went. You shouldn't just wander off like that, I might need you to hold something."

"Who is this?" Mort asked, pointing in Julian's direction. "And why is he talking to me like I'm a hat-rack?" The lemur king's jaw practically hit the ground.

"Mort! Who said that you could be so rude to me? I am your king, you must show the proper respect!" Even Maurice was astounded.

"You don't recognize him? You don't recognize his feet?" he asked the smaller lemur, who shook his head.

"No, should I?" he responded, before pointing to a clock on the wall. "Now if you'll excuse me, I really must be getting to work, or I will be taking a pay cut, and my candy drawer in the cubicle might have been raided." Both Maurice and Julian watched in shock as Mort wandered away from the two of them, hopped off the table and started walking toward the hidden entrance, when suddenly, the fish on the plaque slammed open and the four penguins hopped inside.

"Lemurs? What the heck are you doing in here?" Skipper demanded to know. Maurice approached them.

"I'm sorry, but King Julian wanted to watch your TV, and when we came down here, Mort wandered away and must have activated some crazy trap of yours! Now he thinks he works in a cubicle!"

"I don't remember setting a trap like that..." Skipper mused. Suddenly, Kowalski's beak dropped open.

"Of course! The unfinished gun! He must have activated it somehow!"

"What are you talking about, flightless bird?" Julian asked. "What has made Mort forget who he is?" But Kowalski didn't bother to answer, as he was already thinking of ways to turn Mort back into the annoying, hyperactive, foot-loving lemur that they all knew.

"I suppose that if we switched out the copper coil with an aluminum coil, and then if I re-wired it so it would operate over the telephone lines, then maybe I would be able to reverse the effects of the gun..."  


* * *

  
In the end, Skipper ended up tying Mort to a chair, since over the course of an hour he'd managed to escape and make his way into Manhattan, where he attempted to get into an office building. Needless to say, the presence of a small furry critter on the loose caused mass panic in the workplace and several memories had to be, uh, modified, courtesy of Kowalski and Rico. "No! Let me go!" the lemur struggled against the duct tape keeping him in place. "I'm going to get laid off! You have to let me go, do you understand! I have a family that I need to provide for, and no one is going to give that presentation if I'm not there!"

"You don't have a family,"King Julian said dismissively, still rather amused by the mayhem the smaller lemur's escape had caused. Seriously, nothing was funnier to him than watching grown adult humans running away like mad from probably the most harmless creature ever, while a group of four psychotic penguins chase said lemur around in an attempt to round him up. Seriously, that was comedy gold! "You love me, your king, remember?"

"I don't have a king!" Mort yelled. "This is the United States of America! We have a president, not a king!" Julian looked extremely offended, and was about to say something, but Skipper held him back.

"The boy's not in his right mind, you'll have to ignore everything he says until he's back to himself. As far as he knows, he's a human who is running late for work!"

"But everyone should know that I am their king!" Julian retorted. "And what is this America place he's talking about? We are in New York!" Skipper resisted the urge to slap his flipper to his forehead. He already knew the lemur king was remarkably dense when it came to anything other than himself... and partying... and himself, but still! It didn't make him any easier to work with.

"You know what?" he finally said after a raging silent debate wih himself whether or not to correct King Julian. "The royal bouncy was looking kind of deflated this morning. Maybe you should go take a look at it?" Of course, there was nothing wrong with the bouncy castle, but nothing was ever going to get done if Julian was around. That seemed to do the trick.

"Maurice! The flightless bird here says the bouncy is losing its bouncy-ness! Come on!" Sighing, the other lemur followed his king, really wishing that they'd just stayed in their own habitat that morning. So many problems could have been averted...

"Skipper, I'm going to need some time to figure out exactly what the malfunction on the gun was. To do that, I'm going to need information from Mort," Kowalski began. Skipper looked at him as though he was the one who suddenly decided that he had joined the human workforce.

"He's out of his mind! What information could he possibly give you?" he exclaimed.

"I need to know exactly what the delusions are," Kowalski replied calmly, flipping through some notes he'd made on the device. "Depending on how severe they are, we might have to take extra precautions." Skipper nodded, although he was still skeptial. The lemur was completely bonkers, even if he did manage to provide some slight amount of information that Kowalski would need, would the other penguin even be able to decipher it?

But they tried anyway. Private asked the questions while Kowalski did his best to figure out what exactly went wrong. "What is your name?" Private asked, hoping at least that Mort would have retained that about himself.

"Mortimer S. Johnson," the small lemur replied, still struggling against the duct tape holding him in place.

"His real name is Mortimer?" Skipper asked, surprised. "Remind me to ask the other lemur about that..."

"You say you need to get to work," Private tried this time. "Where is it exactly that you work, and what is your job title?"

"I am an accountant at ABC Lending," Mort replied, an edge of hysteria to his voice. "Will you please let me go? I don't know why you're holding me here... I don't know anything about the corporate crimes! I don't know anything about the insider trading that the CEO has been doing, and I certainly don't know anything about the identity theft scheme!" The penguins all exchanged glances. Um, OK. Out of everything they had expected as a result of the accident, they had not expected that the lemur would suddenly think he was a part of corporate criminal activities.

"Did we find him in the ABC Lending building?" Kowalksi asked. Skipper nodded.

"He did seem to know where the building was."

"I wonder if the blast from the gun rewired his brain..." Kowalski mused. "Maybe he is picking up on the brain waves of an actual ABC Lending employee? I didn't think that my device could do that, but there's a first time for everything. If that is the case, though, then all we'll need to do to get him back to normal is put some tin foil on him until I can reverse the polarity of the gun!"

"I have no idea what you just said," Skipper replied, "but I like the sounds of that!"

Fortunately, tinfoil was not particularly difficult to come by. Although Kowalski had some hidden away in a drawer, he wanted to hang on to that, as he thought he may need it to fix the gun. Luckily, however, there was a hot-dog cart nearby, and without too much trouble Rico was able to secure some of the wrapping for the hot-dogs. Kowalski fashioned it into a stylish hat, and placed in on Mort's head. Almost immediately, the small lemur stopped struggling against the duct tape keeping him from running off, and blinked, clearly confused.

"Why am I tied up?" he asked. "And I don't like this hat! I want it off!"

"You were in an accident," Kowalski explained. "And the hat is for your own safety. Do you remember anything of the past several hours?"

"No..." Mort replied. "Should I?"

"I didn't think so," Kowalski muttered, ignoring the lemur's question. "Just hold on a little longer... I almost have this done!"

Meanwhile, at the ABC Lending building, a very confused accountant realized that he was clinging to his co-worker's feet. "Uh, Mortimer, dude?" the coworker said. "Can you get off of me?"

"Oh my god, Sam, I'm so sorry," Mortimer apologized, immediately jumping to his feet and smoothing out his suit. "I have no idea what came over me!"

"I don't know either, dude," Sam replied. "But it was weird! All of a sudden you collapsed on your keyboard, and when I came to see if you were alright, you fell to your knees and started hugging my feet! You even called me King Something! Yo, why don't you take the rest of the day off? I'll tell the boss you've come down with something. Go home, get some sleep. If something like this happens again, though, call me. My sister's husband is a psychiatrist... he might be able to help you."

"Thanks," Mortimer S. Johnson replied, grabbing his briefcase and walking out of the cubicle. "I'll call you later, or something."

"Alright, here we go! I've set it up so that the gun will operate over the phone lines, and I replaced the inner coil with aluminum instead of copper," Kowalski said. And with that, he pulled the trigger. There was a loud crack, a flash of light, and the chair Mort was taped to went flying across the room before hitting the wall and splintering. In the commotion, Mort's hat fell off, and with shaky footsteps, the lemur got to his feet.

"Did it work?" Private asked, curiously peering at Mort.

"I don't know..." Kowalski said, watching Mort for any signs that he thought he was an office worker. And while he seemed to have been cured of thinking he worked in a cubicle, it seemed that he wasn't back to the same old Mort quite yet.

"Which one of you ordered the Venti Cafe Americano?" he demanded to know. "And we're out of caramel syrup, sorry, you'll need to choose a different drink."

"Now he thinks he works in a COFFEE SHOP!" Skipper yelled. "Kowalski! Fix this!"

"I'm on it!" the other penguin yelled, before picking up and straightening out the slightly flattened tinfoil hat. Once it looked more like a hat and less like a pancake, he put it back on the lemur's head.

Meanwhile, in a Starbucks in Greenwich Village, a barista seemed to come out of a trance to realize she had attached herself to her manager's feet. "Just what do you think you are doing?" the manager asked

"Um, I really don't know," she replied. "What was I doing?"

"I'll have none of your crap today!" the manager yelled. "You're fired!"

"Kowalski! Do something!" Skipper exclaimed, losing patience with the situation. Everything that the intelligent penguin had tried had failed, and although Mort had not regressed to thinking he was an accountant or a Starbucks barista, he had gone through a stay-at-home mom, a frazzled high school history teacher, an angry old man who wanted those dang kids to get off his lawn, an IT employee who was entertaining himself by looking up the Internet browsing history of everyone else in the company, a diva of a Broadway star, a high school student trying desperately to ask out the girl he liked, and extremely disturbingly, Alice the zookeeper. And all over New York City, droves of people were waking up out of these minor trance-things, realizing they were clinging to the feet of the person nearest to them.

"I have exhausted everything that I know how to do," Kowalski declared. "I just don't think there's a way to get him back to the way he always is!" Sighing, he placed a piece of tinfoil over the barrel of the gun, and leaned it against the wall. "I'm going to have a snack. Maybe I'll think of something once I've eaten." Unfortunately, he missed the wall, and the gun dropped the floor, going off and blasting the tinfoil cover off of it. The wad of tinfoil hit Mort right between the eyes, and the small lemur dropped to the ground.

"Brraaawk!" Rico cried in alarm as Mort stood up and removed the hat.

"No! Don't take off the tinfoil!" Kowalski exclaimed. But Mort just looked around, seeming to take in his surroundings.

"Where's King Julian?" he asked. A collective sigh of relief went up from the penguins.

"He's back!" Private cried joyfully.

"Yes!" Kowalski and Rico high-fived each other, while Skipper went up to Mort.

"I hope you learned something today," he said. Mort just blinked innocently up at him, as though he was waiting for the penguin to tell him exactly what it was that he should have learned. "Don't go messing with stuff in people's lairs!"

End

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on my Fanfiction.net account as a two-shot.


End file.
